A young girl stands in thick mud in a camp for displaced persons in Idlib Province, northwest Syria, December 2019
Another 12,000 Syrians have been displaced by this week’s Russian-regime attacks on Idlib Province in northwest Syria.
Mohamed al-Hallaj, director of the Response Coordinators Team, told Turkish State news agency Anadolu that fleeing families are in “dire need” of shelter, blankets, beds, and tents.
He said 110,000 civilians have fled since the Russian-regime assault was renewed last month. More than 500,000 have now been displaced since late April by a Russian-regime offensive to overrun the greater Idlib area, the last major opposition territory in Syria.
“Civilians, most of them children and women, look for shelter under olive trees,” al-Hallaj said.
The aid official echoed the UN’s assessment that Moscow and the regime had intentionally bombed and shelled schools, hospitals, mosques, and civil defense centers, in part to prevent civilians from returning home.
The Ongoing “War Crime”
Forced to pause their assault in early December because of bad weather, Russia and the regime stepped up the attacks on Monday and Tuesday, killing more than 30 civilians.
Most of the victims were women and children, as markets and displaced persons’ camps were among the sites bombed and shelled in towns south and east of Idlib city.
See Syria Daily, Dec 18: Russia Kills 30+ More Civilians, Threatens Block of Cross-Border Aid
Since late April, the Russia-regime offensive has killed at least 1,100 civilians, injured thousands, and displaced more than 500,000. The attacks, which shattered a “de-escalation zone” declared by Turkey and Russia, seized part of southern Idlib and almost all of neighboring northern Hama Province.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “pause” in the airstrikes in early September, but they resumed in early November, killing scores of civilians, most of them children.
The UN has said that the attacks may constitute a “war crime”, but the international community has failed to take any action to check the bombing and shelling.
Instead, Russia is threatening to veto a UN Security Council resolution which would extend the mandate for provision of cross-border aid, including into northwest Syria.
The local administration for the greater Idlib area say 2.4 million residents and 1.3 million displaced Syrians live in the terrority. The UN has estimated that the population is about 3 million people, 20% of Syria’s population after 104 months of conflict.
Turkey hosts 3.6 million of the more than 6 million Syrian refugees forced out of the country. Ankara closed its border in 2016, and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is seeking to resettle 1 million of the refugees in northeast Syria, amid a Turkish cross-border offensive across two Kurdish cantons.
